Spectre 900
The Boxed Aristocrat
+Lives in an enclosure: door slams never reach it
−Costs more than the building: levels need more data
A free browser game about electron microscopy
Beam Time!
You are the microscope. Survive your PhD.
A game from the (EM)² Lab · by Yang Yang
FreeNo installDesktop & mobile10 languages10 chapters
Trailer
Five years. Ten chapters. One thesis.
How it plays
A whole PhD, one jump at a time
Beam Time is a cute side-scrolling platformer in which everything comes from a real microscopy lab. No background needed: if you have ever played a platformer, you can play this.
You are the microscope
Run, jump, dash and stomp
You play a transmission electron microscope, and a very heavy one: landing on a sample is an attack. Your health is the column's vacuum, and falling into a pit vents it.
- Double jump, a quick beam-shift dash, stomp streaks
- A training room teaches one control at a time
- Keyboard, mouse or touch screen
Holders are your weapons
Ten holders, ten after-effects
The holder in your column fires by itself. Each one leaves its own mark on a sample, and swapping them goes through an airlock that leaks a little vacuum.
- Cryo freezes, heating sets samples on fire
- The gas holder corrodes, the liquid cell soaks them
- The indenter punts samples across the screen, the laser dazzles them
Techniques are your skills
Real TEM, as special moves
Learn twenty techniques at detector shrines and time them yourself. Each behaves like the real thing, more or less.
- HAADF hits heavy samples hardest, carbon least
- Bright Field is weak until you find the objective aperture
- 4D-STEM, ptychography, Ronchigram, EELS, EDS, tomography and more
Every enemy is a real sample
Graphene, MXene, perovskites, and Reviewer #2
Samples behave like their materials: graphene is nearly invisible in bright field, perovskites fall apart under the beam, contamination grows. On Normal and Hard, they shoot back.
- Four bosses: the Qualifying Exam, a FIB lamella that is too thick, Reviewer #2, the Thesis Committee
- Lab mishaps and a door that someone always slams
- Three difficulties, each with its own ending
Screenshots
A look inside the column
Pick one of eight
Meet the microscopes
Every microscope has a perk and a flaw. Choose the one that suits how you play.
Talus F250Z
The Workhorse
+Four EDS detectors: picks up more data
−Shared facility: lab events last longer
Kryos G7
The Ice Princess
+Always cold: freezing damage +50%
−Cryo cartridge only, and slowest on its feet
ARN250F
The Cold-FEG Samurai
+22% critical hits; a tip flash sends a shockwave
−No enclosure: every disturbance lasts twice as long
2200Plus
Old Reliable
+Roomy gap: holders hit harder and hardly leak
−Dim filament: skills are weaker
HF7000
Triple Eye
+Three signals at once: every holder shot is tripled
−The dose is split: each hit lands at 55%
UberSTEM 200
The UHV Hermit
+Fast, jumps high, skills recharge sooner
−Tiny holders hit softer, and its stomp is light
Tenzor
The 4D Native
+Born scanning: diffraction skills recharge sooner
−STEM only
All makers, microscopes, perks and flaws are invented for the game and describe no real instrument.
The story
Your thesis: in-situ everything of 6D materials
Nobody has made a 6D material yet. That is your first chapter. You have five years. Probably six.
Year 1
01
Microscope Training
Holey carbon fields, and a single-tilt holder
02
The Night Shift
Your slot: Tuesday, 2 am to 6 am
Year 2
03
The Group Meeting
Bring data. Any data.
04
The Qualifying Exam
Three hours, closed book
BossYear 3
05
Sample Prep
Twelve hours of FIB for one lamella
06
In-situ or Bust
A lamella that is definitely too thick
BossYear 4
07
User Facility
48 hours on the good microscope
08
The Paper
Reviewer #2 has entered the room
BossYear 5
09
Writing Up
Vitreous ice and a blank page
10
Defense Day
Forty slides, three professors
Final boss
TEM 101 · optional
Curious how a real one works?
TEM 101 explains the science behind every joke in the game, for anyone with high-school physics.
A 2-minute 3D film
The microscope opens itself up and explains how it works, out loud: the gun, the vacuum, the lenses, the FIB, and what the camera sees.
15 interactive lessons
Sliders, buttons and 3D models to turn, a live game window for each technique, and one quiz question per lesson.
01Why electrons?02Inside the column03Vacuum04Thin samples05Holders and the airlock06Lenses and focus07Bright and dark field08Diffraction09STEM104D-STEM11Ptychography12Spectroscopy13Beam damage14Tomography15Lab life, decoded
For teachers and outreach
Made for classrooms and open days
Play, then learn
Let students play a chapter or two, then open the matching TEM 101 lessons. The jokes become the questions.
Nothing to install
It runs in any modern browser on lab computers, laptops, tablets and phones. No account, no download, no data collected.
Real microscopy inside
Vacuum, airlocks, apertures, zone axes, dose, contamination: the ideas of a first TEM course, turned into things you do.
Play in your language
English简体中文繁體中文日本語한국어FrançaisEspañolDeutschItalianoPortuguês (Brasil)
Your beam time starts now
Free, in your browser, in about ten seconds.